Erle Ellis is Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems and Director of the Laboratory for Anthropogenic Landscape Ecology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research investigates the ecology of human landscapes at local to global scales with the aim of informing sustainable stewardship of the biosphere in the Anthropocene.

Recent projects include the global mapping of human ecology and its changes over the long-term (anthromes), online tools for global synthesis of local knowledge (GLOBE) and inexpensive user-deployed tools for mapping landscapes in 3D (Ecosynth). He has also studied long-term ecological changes in ancient village landscapes across China and developed tools for mapping and measuring ecological changes in densely populated anthropogenic landscapes. Courses he has taught include Environmental Science & Conservation, Landscape Ecology, Applied Landscape Ecology, Biogeochemical Cycles in the Global Environment and Field Methods in Geography: Environmental Mapping.